Embroidery machines conventionally comprise a machine body having a sewing needle capable of sewing workpiece cloth, a needle bar, a needle bar vertically driving mechanism and a thread take-up mechanism, a cloth holding frame holding workpiece cloth to be sewn in an extended state and a frame drive unit connected to and moving the cloth holding frame independently in two horizontal directions perpendicular to each other. The frame drive unit is attached to a bed of the machine body particularly in household embroidery machines and is detachable from the machine body in many household embroidery machines.
Furthermore, an embroidery machine provided with an ink-jet printer has conventionally been proposed (for example, JP-A-H05-272046 and JP-A-H09-256260). In this construction, a print head of the printer is located in the vicinity of workpiece cloth of the cloth holding frame connected to the frame drive unit, and the cloth holding frame is moved horizontally by the frame drive unit so that the printer injects ink onto the workpiece cloth of the cloth holding frame or an embroidery pattern formed on the workpiece cloth thereby to be capable of printing.
For example, an embroidery machine described in JP-A-H05-272046 is an industrial machine and comprises a horizontally long sewing machine frame provided over a sewing machine table, a plurality of sewing machine heads connected to a front of the sewing machine frame and a plurality of print heads which are connected to a rear of the sewing machine frame so as to be movable up and down. A cloth holding frame is mounted on the sewing machine table so as to be moved horizontally by a frame drive unit. When the embroidery machine is switched between the state where sewing is carried out and the state where printing is carried out, the cloth holding frame is moved (offset) in the cross direction by a distance between a sewing needle and the print head.
Furthermore, an embroidery machine described in JP-A-H09-256260 is an industrial machine and comprises a sewing machine head provided with a needle bar case in which a plurality of needle bars are supported so as to be movable up and down. The needle bar case is moved so that one of the needle bars is switched to a use position. At least one of the needle bars is replaced by a print head in the needle bar case. The print head is provided with a movable head which is moved up and down by a vertically moving mechanism.